Animal Rights Activists Win Rodeo Fight

Animal Rights Activists Win Rodeo Fight

Animal welfare advocates and the world's largest rodeo-sanctioning
organization have settled their copyright battle over YouTube videos,
protecting the advocates' right to publicize their critiques of animal
treatment at rodeos and creating a new model for handling takedown notices.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represents the group
Showing Animals Respect
and Kindness (SHARK), a non-profit organization that videotapes and
photographs rodeos in order to expose animal abuse, injuries, and deaths.
SHARK posted dozens of these critical videos to YouTube throughout 2006 and
2007. When the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) falsely claimed
that 13 of the videos infringed PRCA copyrights, YouTube disabled SHARK's
entire account. SHARK sued the PRCA for misrepresentation, noting that,
among other things, the videos could not have infringed any PRCA copyright
because the rodeos themselves weren't copyrightable.

In a settlement announced today, the PRCA will pay $25,000 for the
improper removals. PRCA has also agreed that any future copyright claims
will be first sent to SHARK's video contact and then reviewed by the PRCA's
general counsel for legal merit before any legal notices are sent to YouTube
or another video service. In addition, the PRCA has agreed not to enforce a
"no videotaping" provision in its ticket "contracts" against SHARK unless it
enforces the same provision against others, meaning the PRCA will no longer
be able to selectively enforce the provision against its critics.

"We're very pleased with this settlement," said SHARK Senior Investigator
Michael Kobliska. "We have a First Amendment right to question how animals
are treated at rodeos and to publicize the inhumane treatment we witness.
This agreement lets SHARK continue its work without unfair interference."

This settlement is part of EFF's No Downtime for Free Speech Campaign,
which works to protect online expression in the face of baseless copyright
claims. EFF has seen people and organizations increasingly misusing the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other intellectual property laws
to demand that material be immediately taken down even when the material
clearly does not infringe any legal rights. Service providers often comply
with these requests without double-checking them, depriving groups like
SHARK of a crucial mechanism for spreading their message.

"As demonstrated in our recent Presidential campaign, YouTube and other
content-sharing sites have become an integral part of American discourse,"
said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Michael Kwun. "When critical
videos are unfairly removed from the public eye, free speech and debate
suffers."

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